Billionaires Diane Hendricks, Dick Uihlein and Liz Uihlein have combined to donate more than $73 million to GOP campaigns and committees since Jan. 1, fueling the Republican effort to stave off a building blue wave.
A WisPolitics review of campaign finance reports found no comparable donor to the Dem committees or campaigns in 2026. In fact, no individual Dem donor has contributed as much over the past 17 years as each of the three GOP billionaires have donated in 2026 alone.
The biggest beneficiary of the donations from Hendricks and the Uihlein has been the state GOP, which has received $27.6 million from the trio and then transferred $24.2 million to Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany.
Dem gubernatorial nominee David Crowley slammed the transfers today during a news conference in Madison. He charged the only reason someone would make donations that size is if they know if they “buy Congressman Tom Tiffany this election, he will sell Wisconsin out to them.”
“These are billionaires who have unlimited resources and know that if the choice is between them and working families, that Congressman Tom Tiffany will choose them every single time,” Crowley said.
Tiffany’s campaign responded by knocking Crowley for fundraisers in California and Washington, D.C., in recent weeks and taking thousands from AI interests and defund-the-police advocates, as well as “millions from the billionaire-backed Democrat Party of Wisconsin.”
Tiffany’s campaign pointed to donations such as the $20,000 that Crowley took from San Francisco-based AI researcher Todor Markov.
“He is fully embracing an agenda of higher taxes, soft-on-crime policies, and massive data centers all over Wisconsin,” Tiffany’s campaign said. “Tom Tiffany is focused on giving paychecks back to working families by returning the $3 billion surplus, lowering property taxes, and cutting income taxes by 10%,” said the Tiffany campaign.
A check of the state’s campaign finance database found Dick Uihlein had donated $28.5 million to committees in 2026. That includes a $10 million donation in August to Restoration PAC, which spent $9.7 million over the two-month September reporting period. The bulk of that $9.7 million went to ads opposing Crowley in the governor’s race.
Dick Uihlein has also given $15.5 million to the state GOP in 2026.
Liz Uihlein has donated $24.7 million to state campaigns in committees in 2026, including $15.6 million to the state GOP. She’s also given $7 million to the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee and $2 million to the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate.
Meanwhile, Diane Hendricks has donated more than $19.9 million. That includes $8.1 million to the state GOP, $8 million to RAC and $3.75 million to CERS. She’s also donated directly to 35 legislative campaigns.
By comparison, the largest Dem donor in 2026 has been Sarah O’Neill, of New York. She’s donated $4.3 million to the Dem Party, the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee, the State Senate Democratic Committee and several campaigns. She had donated $388,527 from 2018-25.
The biggest individual Dem donor listed in the state’s database, which goes back to 2008, is LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who has contributed $16.1 million since 2019. Of that $15.9 million has gone to the state Dem Party. But he’s only made one $750,000 donation in 2026.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzer, meanwhile, has donated $9.1 million since 2020. He gave $1 million to the state Dem Party in August, his only donation in the database for 2026.